Local runners escape injury: 'We were really lucky we made it out OK'

Tuesday

Apr 16, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 16, 2013 at 6:35 PM

Brent Lancaster / Michael D. Abernethy / Times-News

Jim Keck was on the 25th mile of the Boston Marathon when police stopped the race.

The 77-year-old Burlington resident was about 10 minutes away from finishing his seventh Boston Marathon, running on Commonwealth Avenue. He didn’t hear the blasts of two bombs that exploded near the finish line at 2:50 p.m. Monday. He didn’t see smoke, either.

Keck thinks he was about 6 miles away when they went off. He thinks thousands of runners ahead of him must also have been turned away from the finish line.

“I had no idea. Bystanders said a couple bombs had gone off … Everyone was very calm,” Keck said. “I got off the running path and walked to where the barrier was ... I saw an awful lot of ambulances, fire trucks and police.”

The bombing was still under intense investigation Tuesday. Three people were killed and more than 180 more wounded when two explosions went off about 12 seconds apart. Several dozen people were seriously injured, with limbs severed, and some remained in critical condition Tuesday. No suspects had been named publicly by Tuesday evening.

Several U.S. leaders characterized the attack as an act of terror.

According to the Boston Athletic Association’s website, Keck was one of four Alamance County residents who competed in the marathon, along with Holly Fredericksen-Dewitt, of Burlington, Carmen Bork, 32, of Mebane, and Roger Halchin, 60, of Mebane.

Bork and Halchin were unable to be reached by The Times-News Tuesday. The Boston Athletic Association’s website showed that Bork finished with a time of 3:59:05. Halchin finished at 3:41:44.

Fredericksen-Dewitt, 25, finished with a time of 3:06:34, an hour and a half before bombs exploded near the finish line. It was a beautiful day with perfect weather.

After crossing the finish line, she got a drink and a bag of items that all the runners received. She said her time was a little off, what with a hamstring problem and the hilly terrain along the route in Boston.

She hung around for a little while before meeting her parents, Gary and Terri Fredericksen, around the corner. They went to a Dunkin Donuts and walked around the Boston Public Gardens before getting onto a subway to make their way out of the city.

On that subway ride they received a text message from a family member asking if they were OK. They didn’t yet know about the carnage they had left behind.

“We were really lucky that we made it out OK,” she said.

She said that her father, a runner himself, didn’t qualify for the Boston Marathon. They had run the Chicago and Marine Corps marathons together.

If he had qualified and had run, assuming he’d come in somewhere around his average time, he might have been near the finish line when the deadly blasts went off.

Fredericksen-DeWitt said she felt bad for those who were not able to finish the race once it was shut down after all the training they had done just to get there. She said people in that part of the pack are often running for charitable causes.

She thinks she got a chance to run in a race with the “true authentic Boston experience.” In future years, she thinks, added security will change things.

“Now, of course, it’s going to be totally different,” she said.

Fredericksen-DeWitt and her husband, Cash DeWitt, live in Burlington.

Keck ranks Boston as one of his favorite American cities, with New Orleans and San Francisco. He said the people there are friendly and welcoming and he’s always enjoyed running the marathon.

His 6 p.m. flight out was delayed an hour. He had a layover in Washington, D.C., before landing at Raleigh-Durham International. He was back in Burlington at about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Many of the passengers on both flights were marathoners. They shared their race experiences and disappointments in the aftermath of the violence.

The passenger next to Keck was on his first Boston Marathon when he was turned away from the finish line, so he didn’t get the prized medal bestowed on finishers.

“One fellow, he was a seasoned runner. He had his medal (and said he had a number of Boston Marathon medals at home). That guy said, ‘Here, take my medal,’ and gave it to him,” Keck said.

This was Keck’s 44th marathon.

The attacks at an event built on camaraderie and the celebration of strength and willpower saddened Keck